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Award Winning Flaik Brings GPS Data To Your Ski Runs
Posted by Nick Broughall at 8:39 AM on June 2, 2008
There's only five more sleeps until the Australian snow season kicks off, and even though a quick check of the NSW resort's snow cams shows that there isn't too much of the powdery white stuff on the ground at the moment, it's still shaping up to be an awesome year in the "alps". Why, you ask? Because this year, there's an awesome new gadget to track your runs using a combination of GPS and GPRS technology.
It's called Flaik, and last Friday it walked away with the top prize at the Australian International Design Awards.
What you are seeing here is two grown men riding a 2.9 metre XJ-13 two-people snowboard. Why? Because they can, and have an intimate desire to a) look stupid, b) appear in the media looking stupid, c) wear fur coats and hats while sticking their tongues out. Doesn't it seem stupid to you? It will after you see it in action, including the ride with the three-people at the end of the video.
io9 found this great concept by Danish design architects BIG which places a hotel against the side of a mountain with the idea that hotel patrons can finish off a ski or snowboard run by riding directly to their floor. The hotel looks absolutely epic, and I like the way the wavy lines of the hotel match the tracks left on snow by skis and snowboards. [
Say you're Brian Lam, out there on the slopes of Tahoe, snowboarding as your iPhone drops the biggest beats since the Propellerheads' dropped Decksanddrumsandrockandroll. It sounds grand, but there's a logistical problem: You have goggles, plus the earmuffs your mum knitted for you, plus your (definitely not white) earbuds, all connected to your head using different straps, levers and pulleys. Von Zipper combines them all into one easy system: the US$20 Snow Muffs/H-Phones will attach to most ski goggles—but particularly those that Von Zipper by coincidence also sells, for US$60 to $160. [
